Microelectronic manufacturing techniques have led to the miniaturization of numerous devices. Mobile phones, personal digital assistant devices, and digital cameras are very common examples of the miniaturization trend.
One device that has not seen the advantage of microelectronic manufacturing techniques is the printer. Commercially available printers are large compared to many of the devices they could support. For instance, it is impractical to carry a color printer for the purpose of instantly printing photographs taken with known compact digital cameras.
A compact printhead has been described in co-pending United States Patent Applications filed simultaneously to the present application and hereby incorporated by cross reference:
USSNTitle09/575,152Fluidic seal for an ink jet nozzle assembly09/575,141Ink jet printhead having a moving nozzle with anexternally arranged actuator09/575,125Method of manufacture of an ink jet printhead havinga moving nozzle with an externally arranged actuator09/575,176Ink jet printhead nozzle array09/575,147Nozzle guard for an ink jet printhead
In order to construct a camera module for a compact printer system it is necessary to address the problem of control of the image capture and transformation process. Methods of very large scale integration and microelectronic manufacturing are known but have not been applied to the needs of a compact printer system. No suitable image processor exists for a camera module that connects directly to a printer module.